Ever wanted to be in charge? Well, in my own little world I will be, one day. Just not quite yet. I'm a bit tired at the moment... maybe I'll take over after I've had my little nap.
The United Dingdom - stating the bleeding obvious so you don't have to.
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Wednesday, 4 January 2017

Look Ahead

This sceptred isle benefits from a most favourable aspect,
a strategic bastion against travails, set at the confluence of five mighty air
masses (six, if you count the prodigal Returning Polar Maritime) which, as if
to confound our already over-stimulated senses, bring weather quixotic enough to
baffle the most powerful computers on the planet. At the same latitude as
Canada, permafrost and ice storms are unknown. When the European interior is
blanketed in snow for months the mild waters of the Gulf Stream gyre keep us,
if not cosy, mostly above freezing. Apart from our traffic management we can
function all year round with hardly any adjustment necessary in our routines.

Yeah, for sure, on the two days of snow we go a bit
doo-lally, but it’s all over and done with quite soon. And on the plus side we
can manufacture a weather record from practically every day’s observations.
Somewhere in the UK it will be the coldest/hottest/wettest Wednesday 4th
January since... well, since the last one. But it’s not completely batshit crazy;
every year, pretty much, we get four seasons. Admittedly, not necessarily in
the exact same order, but there nonetheless, recognisable, familiar and
somewhat comforting. Such a shame that the enviro-mentals have to make such a
song and dance about every little cold snap, every little heat wave.

A shift of fifty miles in the expected location of a
depression centre and a city is saved from deluge, while another gets
heatstroke. Before we created the great indoors, where everybody lives in
splendid isolation from nature, only a true Brit could stoically handle the sheer
level of phlegm that was needed to survive here. Talk about natural bulwarks.
But then, along came Vice-Admiral Robert Fitzroy with his newly minted notion
of ‘forecasts’ and the job of weather-guesser was created. All you have to do
in Britain for your forecast to come true is wait... it may be some time but it
will come true in the end and everybody will have forgotten what you predicted
anyway.

A week ago, some pundits were practically forecasting a
new ice age, while others were going for the ‘hottest January on record’. By
Sunday evening it was ‘button up for three nights of extreme sub-zero assault’.
Sure enough Tuesday dawned frosty, but not as cold as foretold. The BBC was by
then forecasting a five degree Tuesday night with similar throughout the week,
or what I like to call ‘same as every year’. So here we are today with the
weekend’s forecast proved wrong, yet the rhetoric suggesting it is all on
track. Incidentally, the best way to start a new day’s outlook is to briefly
summarise the current situation, preceded by the words ‘as forecast’.

It is sheer folly to pretend to see more than 48 hours
ahead; nobody is even fully confident about what will happen tomorrow. And as
it is with British weather, so it is with British politics; woe betide the
chancers who pretend to have knowledge that nobody possesses. Forecasting the
departure of Sir Ivan Rogers from the Brexit negotiations may not have required
too much prescience – especially in hindsight – but with his passing we should
also discard much of the frost and gloom he was expecting. It was, after all,
just guesswork.

A bit of a squall... nothing more.

We have a brief winter to get through and then it will be
spring and the prospect of invoking Article 50 lies ahead. As forecast it’s
been a messy old time, especially for all the meddlers and naysayers and
doom-mongers, but the days will get longer and warmer, no matter what the
alarmists will tell us and I predict a long, glorious frequently hilarious political
summer ahead!

4 comments:

Sir Ivan Rogers departure allows me to join that happy band of forecasters and so speculate on future events on Brexit. As usual like them I am probably totally wrong but I believe his departure portends that May is going to play hard ball with the EU. He is ideologically pro EU so his leadership of Brexit would automatically send the signal that the UK would take the best deal that the EU would offer. As it did when Cameron went their cap in hand. So game over. However if his departure and if his successor is an fervent Brexiteer then the signal is the UK has only one deal and the EU can take it or leave. Hopefully I am right and if so that is to me a sound strategy. It will be getting a heavy punch in first and perhaps leave the EU staggering on it's complacent feet from which it will not be able to recover from.

Sir Tim Barrow is a bit of an enigma. His stance on the EU is unknown. Many on the leave side appear to like him which is a plus. No doubt Theresa is happy because his appointment keeps everyone guessing and allows her to carry on dithering. A state she appears to be happiest with something she has in common with Merkel.

Yesterday, somebody on Twitter said 'economists and politicians are not akin to pilots. More weather forecasters, nutritionists or people selling you cheap stuff on 2am TV.' We should not flock to the warm gases emanating from both ends of the 'experts' because they are so disconnected from reality and the people that they are anything but.